"I definitely tried to think of something else to do," said Richards, 17, a senior at Madison High School and a 2014 Argus Leader Academic All Star.

Ordinarily when you're working hard for good grades it's so you can get a prestigious job and earn a big salary, he explained. "It's hard to admit to yourself that you want to be a musician, because typically you don't make a lot of money."

That was difficult to swallow.

To complicate the situation, the decision came fairly late in his school career. Even though he started piano lessons in second grade, "until I was junior I couldn't play well enough to get into a conservatory."

It set him up for hours of practice and that's what led him to identify his passions. Once he realized, "I'm practicing five hours a day, I wonder if that's a sign of something," his path became clear.

Still he kept it to himself. It was tough to let his friends know that he wasn't going to be wealthy, indeed, that he would rather be a modestly paid musician.

When he got a perfect 36 on the ACT test, his friends were bowled over.

"You're going to be rich, you're going to get into any college you want," they said.

But that's not how it works, Richards said. Getting a perfect ACT score has not opened any doors. "Music is a lot more fickle than a grade. Some schools don't even care what your ACT is."

"I never had to work hard to get a good grade. To audition, I had to work really hard. It was a little tough, but it felt good to do it," he said.

His teachers have been supportive as he has developed coping skills.

"He's the type of kid who will use rejection and make himself better. Just because you are turned away from a program doesn't mean it's a reflection on you. Jackson understands that with a rejection comes a lesson learned," said his principal, Adam Shaw.

Richards explains his life lesson: "I've met people that have more skill than me but they don't try as hard, so in the end it doesn't matter that they are more innately talented."

Richards plans to get a doctorate in performance and is open to where his college career might lead. He's willing to perform, teach or be an accompanist. "If you can make a living in music, you've succeeded."

Though he's applied to several colleges, he hasn't made a final decision on where he will go.

"I feel pretty lucky about it," he said. "A lot of my friends don't know what they want to do. It's been a rough trip, but at least I know what's going on."

Sharon Knowlton was Richards' principal for the past eight years until her retirement last summer. She knew of his remarkable musical talent in middle school. "It wasn't until his perfect score on the ACT came back did I know how smart he was. It's his musical talent that is foremost."

"We had several students with perfect or almost perfect scores, all of them have been known for their math, writing or science," Knowlton said. "Jackson is gifted in the arts."

Prokofiev achieved the unachievable. Instead of marinating in depression that the traditional continuous French horn off-beats usually bestow, the horn section of our All-State Band was joyously doing our part to make Prokofiev's March, Opus 99 sound its best. Nevertheless, our director, Jan van de Roost, had a difficult time driving us forward. Indignantly he told us, "There are three types of marches. This is a circus march, but here we are playing a funeral march!" While this didn't sound at all like viable life advice at the time, I would soon discover that these words were very much alive and capable of assuming much deeper meaning than they originally implied.

Departing from my temporary Rapid City headquarters, the return home brought with it a regression to my usual, pessimistic existence. The momentary joy brought by the All-State Band experience was gone and everyday life had begun again. Even in my relatively serene life, I somehow managed to see the worst in every occasion. Clear is the memory of the day when that all changed.

It was a dubiously warm April night and my friends had invited me to go to the state park to take part in a music video they were filming. I had been looking forward to it for many days, having been too busy to spend much time socializing in the weeks leading up to it. Therefore, when the news arrived that the day would inescapably be spent writing not one, but two essays, the sulking began. Midway through my essay, some unknown force brought my thoughts back to the All-State experience. The realization that being forced to write essays is not such a terrible fate hit me. "This is not a funeral march." So why was I treating it as such? With this reinvigorated mindset, my essays seemed to write themselves, and I was even able to join my friends at the lake for the last of the video!

In short order, the rest of my life would follow. Of course, I'm not implying that I am magically able to always remain upbeat and positive, but the improvement is noticeable. Whenever a disappointing or unwanted situation presents itself, I ask myself, "Is this a funeral march?" The answer is always no and thus I steadfastly refuse to treat it as if it was. From difficult tests to temporarily missing pets, staying positive has the effect of alleviating the obnoxious extraneous thoughts and difficulties that must be dealt with when handling unfavorable conditions. I'm not spending my life solemnly and shamefacedly moving towards some inexplicably dreary circumstance. I have no license to lament my existence. My life is not a funeral march.